People that need social care (a local government responsibility) are some of the most vulnerable in our society; they include the elderly, people with mental health problems and those with complex long-term medical conditions.

NHS Connecting for Health has been supporting Department of Health initiatives to improve improving information sharing between the NHS and local government. The following services are available to local authority social services departments in order to support this work.

Social care access to NHS demographic information

This service is available to local authority social services departments so that they can access NHS demographic information. This can be completed in the following ways:

1. Demographics Batch Service (DBS): this provides access to up-to-date patient demographics including validated NHS Numbers. Further information on this service can be found by visiting the Demographics web pages.
2. Personal Demographic Service (PDS) integration of social care IT systems: social care organisations can find information and further guidance on PDS compliance and NHS information governance through the NHS Business Partners programme.  

Health and social care integration (HSCI) messaging specifications

In support of the Department of Health Common Assessment Framework (CAF) Demonstrator Programme, we have developed three groups of standardised messages to support health and social care processes. These are:

• CAF-based assessment and care planning
• Delayed discharge notification
• Continuing healthcare assessment
  The message sets are defined in the HSCI Domain Messaging Specification (DMS), which is available to any interested party through the Terminology Reference Data Update Distribution Service (TRUD). 

The messages have been designed to be used either via the NHS Spine or through local integration mechanisms such as the NHS Interoperability Toolkit (ITK).